


i still own the ghost of you

by imperfectabstraction



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Brain Injury, F/F, F/M, Gen, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2020-09-01 22:36:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20265607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectabstraction/pseuds/imperfectabstraction
Summary: Steve Harrington wakes up to a world where instead of it being November 1985, it's December of 1990. A world where Billy Hargrove is alive and standing right in front of him, telling him Steve loves him and he loves Steve too. And somehow that is the hardest thing to accept.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is something that has been in my head for a while. I want to use it as an opportunity to be more productive in terms of my writing, so I will try to update consistently but each update will vary significantly in terms of length, as I am writing scenes as they progress rather than thinking of definitive chapters.

The headache is what he noticed first; an incessant pounding in his temples that quickly transformed into a stabbing sensation in the back of his skull as soon as he moved. He groaned at the pain, one bony arm lifted to try and soothe away the pain by pressing his too warm fingertips into bones of his brow. It hurt to move, to breathe, to even exist.

But it had never really stopped hurting anyway, if Steve really wanted to be honest with himself.

Not after Starcourt.

Not after Hop died.

Not after Eleven and the Byers had driven away in a moving truck that seemed too small to fit the entire lives of four people who kept being given the short end of the stick inside of it.

Not after watching Billy Hargrove die to save a little girl he didn’t even know.

Not after watching Max cry and cry and cry over the brother that they all thought that she hated, until her breathing turned into horrific gasps for air and her face turned almost purple from the lack of oxygen.

Not after attending a funeral for 30 people and having to look into the tearful, haunted eyes of all the people they left behind and having to lie to them over and over and over again.

It could have been worse, a voice that sounded too much like Nancy reminded him, as he groaned on top of sheets that weren’t his. He had Robin now. He had a friend that could hold his hand when the echoes of his empty house turned into Heather’s and Mrs. Laslow’s and Eddie Allen’s screams. Someone to get high with when the feverish terror that was forever imprinted in his skull in the shape of rows and rows of sharp teeth and squelching viscera seemed hot enough to melt his insides. One person he could rely on to not tell him that he was bullshit, or a disappointment, or an idiot.

Robin helped. Her sense of humor and her intelligence and the way she just _didn’t care _about what other people thought, helped.

But Robin had a future, unlike him. And so, when September came, Robin went back to Hawkins High and played the clarinet in the band, and got straight A’s, and laughed with her nerdy band friends in the hallways, and prepped her probably brilliant essays to apply to the best college music programs in the United States. And he couldn’t ask her to stay with him in his dead-end job at the video store with Keith, who always had orange Cheeto stained hands and smelled like cat piss. Because Robin was going to be someone and he couldn’t hold her back when all he could offer her was _bullshit _in return.

Now every time Robin can’t hang out because of band practice or a family dinner or a recital, Steve just forced a smile onto his face and tells her it’s fine, he understands; she better give him good tickets when she’s famous and playing at the Garden or whatever, even though the Upside Down seems so much closer to re-emerging when he’s alone with his thoughts in a house that is too hollow to be a home. It isn’t hard to fall back into old habits. When Robin is busy, Steve just hits up his old dealer, a twenty something that never got out of Hawkins and grows a surprisingly good strain of pot out of an abandoned lot near the high school. If his dealer is out or doesn’t answer his call, it isn’t hard to find a party to crash and a keg to choke on.

He must look like a joke, showing up to some high school kid’s kegger after he’s graduated and started working a minimum wage job with the same people who would have made fun of back in freshman and sophomore year. But any embarrassment he feels pales in comparison to the weight of his nightmares, of tunnels filled with insidious vines and the bodies of the people he loves melted down into a many limbed creature with a mouth full of hate. When he parties he drinks. He drinks until the image of Billy Hargrove’s body oozing black fluid becomes fuzzy and he temporarily forgets that the sheriff of Hawkins is no longer named Hopper. He returns to the days of “King Steve” and he fucks girls whose names he doesn’t know and doesn’t care to know.

These days Steve rarely sleeps in his own bed.

Waking up in an unfamiliar bed isn’t unusual. The headache also isn’t abnormal but the intensity of it is a surprise. His brain felt like it was spasming in his skull and threatening to ooze out of his ears like there just wasn’t enough space left in his skull.

A whimper escaped his throat.

_It hurt._

Steve has never had a hangover this bad before. He can’t even remember the night before.

His eyes are sticky with sleep when pried open and the soft morning light filtering into the room feels more like being struck in the face with own bat full of nails. Swallowing back a wave of nausea that tastes an awful lot like vodka and little else, he forced himself to look around the room. He was in a bedroom, lying in a full-sized bed covered in dull grey sheets and a matching duvet. The pillow beside his head is dented where someone else’s head must have rested.

A nightstand sits to the left side of the bed where he lays and a guilty, near empty bottle of Smirnoff sneers at him as the surface of the bottle catches the sun.

Groaning, he turned away from it to the right side of the room where another nightstand sits, a pile of books stacked high on top of it. He can see a sturdy wooden door that must lead out of the bedroom. He should suck it up, swallow back the vomit that is sure to rise again when he tries to stand up and make an exit before whoever it is that he spent the night with comes back to their room.

Steve doesn’t think they fucked if the threadbare shirt stretched across his chest and the loose sweatpants around his waist are still there. He has always hated hooking up with clothes on, like they’re both so eager to get away from each other after that they can’t even commit to getting fully naked. It reminds him too much of parents, who have always seemed reticent to stay with him beyond a shallow pat on the back or kiss on the cheek.

He doesn’t know if he can stand, not with the continued scraping of a blade inside his skull and the subsequent agony it elicits down to the tips of his bare toes.

But it doesn’t matter what he wants because another door, one he hadn’t noticed near the end of bed, swings open and from it appears a head of blonde curls and a bare, scarred, entirely masculine chest of tanned skin. A small golden icon swings between the man’s pectorals while the stranger dried his hair with an old, discolored towel.

The throbbing in his head stopped as all the air in his chest expelled from his body in a gasp, his head raising of its own accord as his eyes blurred and burned with the motion.

“Billy?” Steve gasped.

The man in front of him stopped and pulled away the towel from his face, damp curls framing the sharp grin that took up most of his face. “Sleep well, baby?” Billy asked, tongue wagging between his teeth.


	2. Chapter 2

If Billy was as shocked to see Steve as Steve was to see Billy, he never showed it. The blonde boy threw his towel onto the bed post and stretched like it is perfectly normal for a guy who has been dead for four months—a guy who died right in front Steve—to strut around half naked while the guy he nearly beat to death and then almost turned into a human sludge monster lied in his bed. “You were wasted last night,” Billy laughed, snapping the waist band of his boxer briefs before turning away from Steve and sliding open one of the drawers of the oak dresser by the bathroom door.

“I have no idea how Janie drinks like that considering she’s like 90 pounds soaking wet, but you really gotta stop trying to outdrink her. You’re gonna put yourself into an early grave,” Billy chattered away, folding and unfolding shirts as he went.

The throbbing in Steve’s skull intensified. His hands trembled as the image of Billy Hargrove doing mundane tasks like trying to pick a t-shirt failed to disappear behind his rapidly blinking eyes. “Billy?” He asked again, his heart threatening to burst out of his ribcage in time with the throbbing in his skull.

Billy turned to face him, a ribbed grey Henley in his scarred hands, and a question in his eyes. “Steve?”

If the weed and the drinking, the partying, and the girls were only a band aid to hide the grisly wound that Starcourt had seared into his body and soul, then the sound of Billy Hargrove, once Steve’s rival and nemesis, saying his name without a mocking tone behind it stripped it right off. Despite the fact that his head ached and his body was tired, despite the fact that he felt sick and dehydrated and exhausted, and all he wanted to do was just fall into oblivion, Steve threw back the covers of the duvet and forced his legs over the side of the bed.

Tears streamed down his cheeks as his legs buckled under their sudden use, his knees hitting the light green carpet with a bang.

Billy threw his shirt down and ran to him, his warm, calloused hands searing Steve’s skin as he gripped his shoulders. “Baby, what’s wrong? Did you have another nightmare? Why didn’t you call for me?”

His ears were ringing as he looked into Billy’s endlessly blue eyes, eyes that he had watched go blank in death, eyes that he had closed himself so Max wouldn’t have to look at them lifeless and unseeing. He touched Billy’s face, cradled his stubbled cheek in his trembling hand. “How?” He asked.

Billy only looked confused. “Baby, I don’t understand,” the Californian boy whispered.

Steve swept his hand down, pressed the tips of his fingers into the hollow of Billy’s throat and felt the other boy’s Adam’s apple bob in response. He couldn’t stop touching him once he started. Steve’s hands pressed against his pectorals, dropping lower until they touched the jagged keloid mass right below. The scar was bigger than Steve’s whole hand laid flat across the bottom of Billy’s chest. He knew the scar, though he had never seen it before. He could see so clearly the memory that was Billy, roaring in defiance of the monster, black fluid flung from his lips, as the Mind Flayer’s tentacle pierced through his flesh.

His hands kept following downward, like he was under some sort of thrall, and soon he had both of his palms pressed against Billy’s sides where another cluster of keloid scars were pale and apparent against his golden skin. These were smaller—warnings to stand down from the Mind Flayer—and splayed across Billy’s ribs. Steve took Billy’s hands in his next, the other boy’s hands having slipped from his shoulders as Steve pushed into his space, hungry for evidence that one part of the nightmare that occurred four months ago wasn’t real. He observed the scars on his palms, the pale twining shapes liking over the sides of his hands onto the knuckles of his thumbs. They were smooth to the touch but twisted in form, the inhuman shape and texture of the monster the Mind Flayer created forever imprinted on to Billy’s skin.

He didn’t understand how one person could survive so much.

He didn’t understand how any one person should have had to survive so much.

“I’m sorry,” Steve choked out in between a sob. “I’m sorry we didn’t help you.”

“Steve,” Billy whispered again. “I don’t understand. Tell me what’s wrong.”

He didn’t deserve this kinder, gentler Billy. Not when he still had nightmares of ramming the Todfather into the Camaro and watching as the blue Chevy caught aflame, Billy writhing and screaming in agony as he burned within a metal coffin while Steve just watched. He may not have deserved Billy’s hate before. But he deserved it now, after leaving him to die back then, and watching him die right after, nestled in the side of his new best friend as a boy, abused and unloved beyond his greatest imaginings fought to save them all.

“How are you here? How are you alive?” Steve whispered too, his hands shaking as he held Billy’s palms in his. “How are you back?”

Something in Billy’s expression changed then. His blue eyes appeared softer before a sad smile graced his pink lips. “It was just a nightmare, Steve. I’m ok. Everything is ok now. It’s gone now. _He’s_ gone now. And I’m back and I’m not going to leave you again, ok? I promise.”

It didn’t make sense.

None of this made sense.

Billy was dead. How was he not dead? Why wouldn’t he answer?

“How?” Steve repeated, dropping Billy’s hands like they had burned him. “How are you alive? I saw you die. We all saw you die!” He shouted.

“Steve, calm down. It’s ok. It’s just a nightmare. I’m ok. You know I’m ok.” He tried to reach for him but Steve slapped his hands away.

“No! Why won’t you tell me how you’re back? Why--” He stopped as a cold dread took over him. Because what if…what if Billy wasn’t Billy? What if _it_ was back? And Billy had brought him here to turn him into one of those things? One of those hideous, deformed living pounds of flesh.

“Because you know how I’m back!” Billy shouted back. “Just listen to me, you need to lay down. You just didn’t take your sleeping meds last night because I didn’t want you to mix them after you drank so much. You’re just confused. Just take a sec. Lie back down, you’ll feel better. You always do.”

Steve stumbled to his feet, a cold sweat breaking out over his forehead as the world spun violently. “You’re not Billy,” Steve hissed, taking several steps back and away from the blonde still kneeling on the ground.

“What? Just calm down. It’s going to be alright. Everything is going to be alright.” Billy said slowly.

Everything will be alright?

Eleven had said that Billy would try to comfort the people he brought to the monster. That he would whisper some words of comfort to them, even while possessed, to try and make up for his sins.

But Steve didn’t want to die. He didn’t want comfort. He wanted to leave. He wanted to see Robin laugh so hard she snorted strawberry milkshake up her nose again. He wanted to hear Dustin talk about his science project that he didn’t understand. He wanted to watch Max and Lucas fight and makeup and breakup and makeup again. He wanted to drive all the kids and Nancy down to see the Byers for Thanksgiving and have Joyce brush a hand under his eye and notice how tired he looked and tell him he could take a nap in her room if he wanted. He wanted to see Nancy and Jonathan and Eleven and Mike be so in love and envy it and wonder if someone would ever look at him that way.

He wanted so much.

But most of all, he wanted to live.

“No!” He screamed, the sound deafening in the small, sunlit bedroom. He shoved Billy as hard as he could and the other boy went down easy, clearly having not expected the action.

“Steve!” Billy gasped in surprise as he fell back on his ass, arms flung back to catch himself against the carpet and blue eyes still so human despite the evil that lingered within, waiting to emerge.

“Stay away from me!” Steve screamed, leaping over Billy even as his vision splintered into a kaleidoscope, a dozen Billys looking at him with concern as he lurched to the left to get to the door and out of the room, out of the house, out of _danger_ before he joined the list of names of everyone who had died since this nightmare had begun 3 years ago.

Billy scrambled up behind him as he stumbled forward. Steve couldn’t get the doorknob open with the sweat covering his hands, his panic threatening to choke him as the blonde came closer.

“Steve! Calm down!” Billy shouted, his scarred hand gripping one of his shoulders and trying to pull him back toward the blonde.

An inhuman sound born of fear and a desperate want for this to be over, to wake up in sweat soaked sheets, broke out of his throat. With all of the strength he had, he released the doorknob for just a moment to shape his hand into a fist and punched the other boy with all of his might.

Billy yelped as Steve’s fist struck him right in the nose and the blonde boy fell hard onto the carpet before Steve managed to get the doorknob open and ran down the steps.

He turned back once, just to make sure that Billy wasn’t just on his heels, and only saw Billy, on the ground and holding his now bleeding nose with what looked like tears forming in his blue eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

He nearly took a tumble running down the creaking staircase. It felt like he wasn’t in total control of his body as his bare feet pounded down the steps. It was like he was overhead in ceiling light that illuminated the stairs, watching a terrified version of himself stumble down a half flight while simultaneously feeling the wood steps creak beneath the bottoms of his feet.

Spots of light were beginning to invade the corners of his vision as he stumbled over the last step, his bony knees slamming to the floor with an audible bang. He caught himself on the palms of his hands and only had a moment to breathe before the confines of his stomach came rushing up and were spewed across the same dull green carpet. Vomit trickled out of his nose as he forced himself back up to his feet, swaying for a moment as the world seemed to tilt around him before he was able to push his aching body into a run for the front door.

The tips of his fingers felt strangely numb as he grasped the deadbolt and forced it open before doing the same with the bottom lock. In his haste to escape, he threw the door open with another audible sound before leaping down a series of concrete steps and running away into the night.

It was freezing outside. Much colder than Steve remembered it being the night before when he had decided to go out to a party and get wasted enough that he could forget the trembling of Eleven’s lip when Joyce had told her that Hopper wasn’t coming back. A thin layer of snow was on the ground now and his feet burned with every step that he took. Goosebumps clustered across his bare arms as he continued to sprint forward, the world looking less and less familiar as he put more distance between himself and the Mind Flayer.

His vision dwindled into a spotlight. He could only see the trees and road ahead of him. There was darkness in his periphery no matter how many times he rubbed at his eyes. Maybe the Mind Flayer had done something to him with his touch and that explained the still apparent thrumming pain that was trickling across the entirety of his skull. Better yet it would explain how somehow, despite having lived in Hawkins for his entire life and never having left it, he had no idea where he was.

He followed a paved road but had no clue where it led. His surroundings reminded him of the forest near Hopper’s old cabin, but he also knew that the cabin was two miles out from any established roads in Hawkins. There were no other houses that he could see. Only a few streetlights that seemed to appear every twenty paces or so, along with telephone lines that seemingly led nowhere.

He had to get out of this place and back onto a main road. He had to find something he could recognize so that he could get to Dustin and Mike and Lucas and Max. He had to warn Robin. He had to make sure that all of them were safe. He couldn’t lose anybody else. Not to that thing. Not again.

Steve hobbled to a stop in the middle of the road, casting a glimpse back to see that the little shack where Billy had kept him was no longer in view. He glanced down at his feet and winced when he saw his pale skin had turned an angry red in his haste to get away in the snow. He’d be lucky if he kept all his toes after this, but better a missing toe or two than turning into a writhing mass of undead flesh.

In a time like this he really wished Tommy hadn’t convinced him to quick Boy Scouts. Knowing the difference between South, East, West, and North would be pretty damn useful for getting back into town. 

If only—

If only he had turned around he might have seen it.

If only the ringing in his ears wasn’t still so loud he might have heard it.

If his mouth didn’t still taste like bile and his nose wasn’t congested with vomit and snot maybe he could have tasted the diesel in the air.

But in the immediate moment that it happened, Steve felt it—the impact of the truck’s grills into his back as it careened into him. He felt the rush of air as he was propelled forward and up, up so much higher than he would have thought that his body could go. He felt himself go down too quickly for it to ever have been safe until his body crunched against the pavement, something inside of him snapping, breaking, and twisting until the aftertaste of vomit was replaced by the metallic taste of blood.

And then there was darkness, only darkness, and the familiar sound of demo-dogs shrieking in the night.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve was eight years old and he was following Tommy up a ridge deeper into the forest. There was a Flintstones band-aid across his bloody knee and his shoelaces were dragging foxtails and mud. His hair was a bird’s nest on the top of his too warm, already sun-burned skull and he had never felt better. Tommy wanted to show him something, something fun that he promised Steve would be worth hiking up what felt like a mountain and making his nanny yell at them later.

Tommy was always so adventurous. The freckle faced boy was always trying new things, eating strange foods, telling incredible stories. He was brave and fun and loyal, just like a knight from a story and Steve would have followed him anywhere, even as the sun began to set above them and the sound of his nanny’s voice was now too far off to hear.

Tommy was his best friend in the world, and they would always be friends, Steve told himself as he stumbled on a patch of loose dirt covering an incline, his foot going sideways as Tommy climbed further and further away from him.

_“It’s not your fault,” a voice whispers. _

“Hurry up, slowpoke!” Tommy teased, his tongue sticking out between his missing two front teeth.

“I’m trying!” Steve huffs, crossing his arms to ward off the fear that always comes with thinking that maybe one day Tommy won’t think he is cool anymore and he will just leave, the way his parents left and never seem to return for too long since his nanny appeared a year ago.

“Gotta try harder, Stevie. You’re never gonna reach the top if you walk like a grandma.”

“I don’t walk like a grandma!”

_“Oh yeah?” A voice chuckles without humor. “How is this not my fault? If I hadn’t just sat there crying like a pussy this never would have happened.”_

Instead of moving faster, Steve slowed to a near standstill, his eyes searching for the voices that seemed to echo all around him. “Tommy,” he asked slowly, trying to mask his fear by spacing the syllables of the other boy’s name. “Do you-do you hear that?”

_“He hit you. It’s not ok to hit someone you love.” The first voice whispered again._

“I don’t hear anything other than you whining,” Tommy said meanly, his eye roll audible even as he refused to turn his head back to face Steve, shoulders up and resolute as he kept striding on higher and farther from Steve.

_“Pretty sure that I should be used to that sort of thing by now.” The second voice scoffs. _

A cold sweat broke out across Steve’s skin. Something was wrong. His mind went to his father, sitting in the kitchen and turning through the pages of the Hawkins Post, mumbling about how the crazies needed to be put in front of a firing squad to keep them from sucking up all of society’s resources. Was he crazy now? Would his dad take him in front of a firing squad? Would he hurt Steve with more than words and disappointed looks and broken promises?

He didn’t want to find out.

One moment he was standing in the setting sun, letting the orange, peach, and lilac sky lead him higher than he had ever ventured before. The next moment, he was in darkness. A thick, impermeable a thing where he couldn’t see the stars or the moon above him. Tommy, even with his pale skin and howling voice, was lost in it and Steve was alone, more alone than he had ever been and lost on the side of a mountain pass with no one to guiding him back down with a skinned knee and a mounting fear in his heart.

“Tommy?” He whimpered.

_“Steve, you have to come back.”_

“Tommy!” He shouted, taking off at a run up the incline to escape the strange voices that grew louder in his ears.

_“What if it’s…What if it’s him?” The second voice asks, voice filled with fear. _

_“It’s dead. This was just an accident, kid. Don’t borrow trouble.”_

_“I’m not borrowing shit!” That second voice roars. “It was never in your head! You don’t know what it’s like! You don’t know how much it hated me at the end, for betraying it, for-for turning against it. It said it would destroy everything I ever cared about. Steve is the only thing I… I can’t lose him.”_

_“He’s not lost, kid. He’s still here.”_

_“Here for you. He remembers you.”_

_“He’ll remember you too.”_

_“Not if He doesn’t want him to. Not if He wants to take everything away from me all over again. Not if He wants to break me.”_

“Stop it! Stop it!” Steve cried as he ran. He pressed his palms against his ears to drown out the noise, but the voices just became louder, rumbling like thunder before the downpour.

_“It’s not Him. It’s dead. He’s dead.”_

_“So was I.”_

A desperate cry broke free from his small chest as his legs pumped up the last of the incline. “Leave me alone! Tommy! Tommy, where are you?!”

“I’m right here, slowpoke. What took you so long?” Tommy asked, standing in the middle of a clearing of wilting harebells.

“Tommy, we have to go back. Something's not right. There are people out here and something bad. We have to go home.” Steve mumbled, heart still racing in his chest.

_“Dingus, I came all the way out here for you so you gotta wake up and show me those pretty brown eyes, okay? I can’t…I can’t really do this without you, you know? You’ve kind of become the breakfast sandwich to my morning. You make things messy but I am so much better with you than without you. Please, please wake up.”_

Tommy pulled at the wilting heads of the harebells, crushing them in his plump fingers until his fingers were stained purple. “Don’t be such a baby, Stevie. We just gotta wait a few more minutes. It’s gonna be worth it, I promise.”

_“Hey, bud. I uh, I’m gonna need you to wake up soon, okay? My mom is really worried about you and she’s seriously overbaking right now to deal with her anxiety. I am never gonna keep this hot college bod if you stay bed bound. And uh…look Steve, I know I have always said he’s an asshole and I still think he’s an asshole, but he needs you. He’s not okay without you.”_

A prickling sensation crept down Steve’s neck and he twitched at the sensation, a strange pain lacing down his spine before drifting away out of reach. It felt like an old wound had been toyed with, but he had never been hurt in his neck or his spine before. Just a broken arm, scraped knees, and a busted chin once during summer camp.

“Tommy, I have to go ok? Something’s wrong. I don’t think I’m supposed to be here! I gotta go home!” He was ashamed of the way his voice cracked at the end and the tears that pricked at his eyes. He didn’t want to cry. His father hated crying. His mother said it was manipulative. Tommy would make fun of him for it but Tommy couldn’t hear the voices and the voices scared him. He wanted to go home where it was quiet and safe.

“Just a few more seconds, Stevie! I promise!” Tommy still hadn’t turned to look at him, was still pressing harebells between his dirty fingers.

_“If You…if it’s You, I won’t let You hurt him anymore than You already have. I will find You. I will find You, no matter what world You escape to and I will make You hurt the way he does. I won’t let You get away this time.”_

“Look!” Tommy yelled out, pure glee in his voice. As the darkness covers the petals of the harebells, small balls of light flicker into being all around them.

Lightning bugs. A whole horde of them.

The tiny, flickering lights dance around them in the dark. Too weak to illuminate the darkened world around them, but vibrant enough to calm the panicked racing of his heart.

One bug landed on the tip of his fingers, legs sticky with pollen as it gently buzzed a tune of its own making that somehow turns into a harmony embraced by all its fellow bugs. His mouth fell open in awe, some emotion that goes beyond gratitude attempting to worm its way out of his throat in words he doesn’t yet know how to say.

“Told ya, Stevie; who cares if your stupid parents forget your birthday when you’ve got me!” Tommy turned toward him with a smile that threatened to split his cheeks.

Maybe an eight-year-old shouldn’t be able to understand an emotion so profound but it strikes him all the same.

It’s love.

He loves Tommy. He loves his best friend and chosen brother in one. He loves Tommy and Tommy loves him. The way that a family is supposed to love one another. The way he wished his father and mother would love him.

He would give up every present from every other birthday and the birthdays to come, every toy in his room, every baseball card and poster, if he could live in this moment where he feels loved by his very best friend, forever.

_“Don’t forget, kid. You’re not alone like you used to be. We’re all here. We’re all waiting for you to wake up. We love you. We’re not a complete set without you on the board.”_

“I don’t want to leave,” Steve found himself crying.

“We can stay here forever, if you want,” Tommy said, moving toward him even with a half dozen lightning bugs cupped in his palms. “We’ll never do homework again and I’ll never forget your birthday and you’ll never forget mine. We can be here for each other all the time. No stupid jobs. No stupid teachers. No stupid divorces. Just me and you.”

“I want to stay,” Steve cried.

_“You have to come home, Steve.”_

_“Don’t leave me now, dingus.”_

Tommy stepped closer, releasing the lightning bugs to outstretch his pale hand in the growing dark, his face becoming more and more obscured as the dark seemed to grow heavy all around them, the glow of the bugs becoming dimmer with each step the other boy took.

“Stay with me, Stevie.”

_“I’d do anything for you. That’s why I did this. I know you’ll be mad. I know you kept saying I could call this in to get back to California but there’s no point in going if you’re not with me. I hope you wake up so you can understand. Baby, I’d do anything to make you understand.”_

The buzzing faded, the lightning bugs evaporating beneath the veil of darkness draping over them, a visible weight across he and Tommy’s shoulders.

“No monsters. No nightmares. No Upside Down. No bullshit. Just you and me, the way it was before,” Tommy said as he moved closer. “We can be happy here. You and me, Stevie. You and me and this place forever.”

His hand was outstretched, and he could feel the tips of Tommy’s cool fingers in his as all the tears dried up on his face. “Forever?” He asked.

“Forever,” Tommy confirmed, his face lost in the oncoming night.

Steve’s hand was almost in his when a new voice, piercing and hot, barreled down from the sky and set fire to the forest, the harebells, Tommy, and the lightning bugs that had been pulled into shadow, until the shadows screeched in pain as they melted beneath a pillar of hot flame.

_“Steve Harrington,” the new voice commanded. “It is time to wake up.”_

And he did.


	5. Chapter 5

He kept trying to wake up like the terrible voice commanded him to, but his eyes felt as if they were glued together. His whole body yearned for more rest, screamed in protest at the first fluttering of his lashes. Steve’s heart ached to return to the safety of darkness set aglow with lightning bugs and an eight-year-old Tommy Hader’s gap-toothed smile. If it took this much effort, this much face wrinkling, painful tension and release of the muscles of his face just to get his eyes open—

One eye pried itself from the gunk stuck to his lashes and rotated around in his head, still unseeing until he managed to focus in front of him.

His vision was fuzzy once he managed to rejoin the waking world. He could faintly see a white colored glob with multicolored poles sticking out of it. He wiggled his toes and noted his body was covered in a pale blue blanket. There was a heaviness to his limbs that suggested that moving was out of the question, but all the pain in his head from before had vanished, a strange sluggishness to his thoughts all that was left behind.

He opened his mouth to speak and felt his chapped lips crack open in response, his throat dry but his tongue coated in a gross film that threatened to make him vomit. There was movement to the right of him and with great effort, he shifted his gaze slightly to the side to briefly capture the image of a bleach blonde haired girl chewing on the inside of her cheek as she held a red pencil in her left hand a newspaper in her right.

“A six-letter synonym for kind,” the girl muttered to herself, tapping at her nose with her pen and seemingly unaware that Steve was awake.

“Where?” He croaked, licking around the film that made his tongue too big for his mouth. “Where?” He muttered again, too exhausted to try and say the rest of his question.

The girl gasped, her pen and newspaper falling to the floor as she jumped in her chair with an audible click and rustle. “Steve!” The mystery girl shouted, reaching out to him only for him to flinch in return at her volume and unfamiliarity.

“Oh sorry! Shit! Fuck! I mean, I’m so happy you’re awake but Robin and Dustin literally just got Billy to go home an hour ago and he’s going to be so mad he wasn’t here when you woke up. Do you need something? Are you comfortable? Shit, are you hungry? I mean it’s been days since you ate anything. Do you want me to call Billy? What do you need? Whatever you need, I’ve got you. Don’t worry!” The girl rambled on and on, either unaware or impervious to his weak attempts to get away from her flailing hands.

“Who…” Steve struggled to swallow past the dry aching of his throat. “Who are you? Where? Where am I?” He managed to whimper at last, his panic rising as the room came further into focus.

There was no familiarity to be had in looking at white walls in a dimly lit room.

The girl reeled backward and away from him for a moment, mouth open like a fish, before her brow furrowed and her shockingly green eyes seemed to soften. “Oh, Steve. Of course you don’t remember me. If you can’t remember Billy of course you wouldn’t remember me. Fuck, Robin and Dustin should have never left me here!”

“Rob…Robin? Where?” He wanted to sound demanding but his voice came off as a pathetic, wheezing crackle as he fought valiantly to make his chest expand and deflate as it normally would.

“Robin’s at your place. She and Dustin just wanted to make Billy shower, brush his teeth and stuff, but they’re probably already on their way back!”

She wasn’t making sense. Billy was dead and even if he wasn’t dead, he would never shower at Steve’s place. Was she trying to trick him? “Who are…?”

The strange girl had the decency to look embarrassed. “Oh right! Yeah, you totally asked that before. I’m Aurora; Robin’s girlfriend. She asked me to look after you for a bit. We’ve been joking that I’m the one named after Sleeping Beauty but you’re the one who went all comatose on us.”

The joke fell flat as Steve just continued to stare at her.

“You’re right. Totally inappropriate joke given the circumstances. Will definitely get on her about using humor as a coping mechanism.” The girl, Aurora, squirmed beneath his gaze.

“Coma?” He asked, catching on to some of the last few words she said. He had been in a coma? How? When? Was it the Upside Down? Was it back? Is that how Billy was here?

Steve opened up his mouth to ask all these questions and more only to slip into a coughing fit. His coughs wracked his thin frame, leaving him paralyze and nearly bent in half, fingers twitching in an attempt to grab onto the last vestiges of the air in his lungs before they were expelled into the dry hacks that burst from his torn throat. Tears slipped beneath his tightly clenched lashes with the force of his cough. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t stop coughing and he couldn’t breathe.

A familiar old panic, the same one that had sent demodogs flying at the force of his bat, and that had nearly beaten in a Russian man’s head filled him. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t have that much to live for, stupid, and worthless, and _bullshit_ that he was, but he didn’t want to die. But there was no bat this time, no phone, no cry of rage to usher forth from the bottom of his stomach. He was in a hospital bed, choking on his own breath, dangerously close to suffocating and unable to ask for help even from the stranger that stood at his bedside, green eyes wide with terror.

“Steve!” He heard her cry. “Steve, just hang on! I’m gonna get a nurse!” She yelled.

She fled the room, blonde hair spilling out of one of the buns on her head. He tried to stop her, tried to get his body to move to grab her, to do anything other than just clench and twitch, but he was beginning to become lightheaded as more air came out and none traveled in.

Over the past couple of years, Steve had imagined himself dying in thousands of ways. Torn apart. Ripped open. Congealed into a mush of blood and bone. Picked apart by frail birds with too big, blue eyes and razor-sharp beaks digging at the meat of him only to find no substance in his blood and bone. He had never imagined something as pathetic as dying in a hospital bed from a coughing fit. It seemed too mundane given all of the horrors they had faced. But this is what it all came down to, huh? Good old King Steve-- killed by a cough in a hospital bed with no one even there to see him go.

Once he had choked on a piece of pie when he was fifteen. He had been alone in the house that he grew up in but wasn’t sure he could call home. He had inhaled a piece of Dutch apple pie mindlessly, too busy watching a baseball game to pay attention and it had gone down the wrong pipe. The nugget of crust had felt like a piece of glass in his windpipe, made him lurch up and put his hands to his throat like he could pick it out from the outside in. Fear had coursed through him as the thought that he couldn’t breathe solidified in his brain. He had wanted to cry out, but knew no one was home but him, the housekeeper gone before he had even woken up for the day. At the time he hadn’t even thought of how sad it was that he was alone, just knew he didn’t want to die on his mother’s carpet and have his father scoff at what an idiot he was to have choked at home alone. So he had thrown himself upwards from the couch and with every bit of strength he had, throne both his hands up and then drove them down beneath his sternum until the piece of pie was spat across the floor.

At that time, all he could think of was how he would be mocked by his peers for dying in such a pathetic way. He could imagine how much his father would complain about paying for his service. How his mother would maybe weep a bit harder at him staining the lush white carpet than about him. Now he wondered how Dustin would manage to do his hair without him, how Lucas would get to school if his dad’s car broke down again, how Robin would have to drive in that deathtrap she called a car without him to give her a ride nearly every day. Somehow without him even realizing it, he had finally become an integral part of so many people’s lives and it was only now, as he felt his own face purpling with exertion and need for breath, that he realized it.

Only it was too late because he couldn’t hear any doctors coming and there was no sign of the green eyed, blonde girl who claimed to be Robin’s girlfriend. Just him and his bed, alone, and afraid, and not wanting to die but not knowing how to stop dying.

Until the voice came again, louder and stronger than it had been before.

“Stop coughing, Steve Harrington,” the voice commanded and in an instant his throat stopped spasming and he was sucking sweet air into his lungs and falling back into his hospital bed with a clang.

The lights above him had multiplied into dozens of tiny spots across his eyes, tears still coursing down his cheeks, as he gasped at the air that he had finally pulled into his chest.

“You are quite accident prone; I must admit.” The voice said, a hint of amusement in its tone. “I don’t think I’ve ever had to put quite so much effort into saving someone as I have you. Although, saving has not been asked of me much in my life.”

“Who are you?” He asked to the ceiling, too exhausted to do much more than lie there and wonder at how his chest was rising and falling with such newfound ease.

“Look at me,” The voice commanded. “Look at me and see.”


	6. Chapter 6

There was a woman standing in the doorway.

She reminded Steve of something that Jonathan had said once when they had been paired together for an art project.

“Grotesque but beautiful. Hard turn to turn your eyes away from even though it’s not a pretty picture, get what I mean?” The perpetually somber, nervous boy had said as he paused over the image of a famous painting for them to analyze. There had been a grey, robed figure in it, jaw distorted into an endless scream as it pressed its fingers against its face.

Steve had said, “sure man, whatever you say,” and had left it at that, but he hadn’t really understood what Jonathan meant. He just thought the painting was creepy, not beautiful at all, and he definitely couldn’t understand why it was a famous work, but he let it go because Jonathan was smart and no one had ever made that claim about him and if the other boy knew as much about paintings as he did about photography, Steve would actually pass a class with an A.

They’d received an A+ on the project and that cemented an A- on Steve’s report card. The only other one he could claim beyond Shop.

Now he understood what Jonathan meant.

The woman standing in the doorway made goosebumps travel across his skin and a cold sweat trickle into the small of his back. She was tall and perhaps if she had another face and another form, she could have been a model for it, some part of him thought numbly. She was completely bald and with no visible eyebrows to speak of with skin paler than the tracing paper he had used to draw pictures his mother would later throw away as a child. But the fairness of her skin brought the blue of her veins to the forefront of the eye and he could only stare in mild horror and interest as her face and head appeared to house dozens of dormant blue serpents.

Dark circles seemed etched beneath white eyes without pupils, dripping red at the corners, as a trickle of blood dripped from her large, pointed nose. “Do you see me, Steve Harrington?”

He nodded weakly, a trembling beginning in the tips of his fingers. “Who—who are you?” He asked, voice cracking more out of fear than weakness this time.

She stared back at him, cocking her head to the side like an animal that was curious about the behavior of its prey. “I am the First,” her thin, colorless lips stretched into a humorless smile. “I am far from the last, though you should know that, Mr. Harrington. We have met before. Only once but it was…” She clicked her tongue in thought for a moment. “Memorable,” she decided on.

“I don’t know you,” Steve was quick to deny. You couldn’t forget someone like the woman who stood before him.

_Grotesque but beautiful_.

Like seeing something you weren’t supposed to and cherishing it for the secret thing it was in spite of all its ugliness.

“Twelve mentioned that you did not remember his return. I assumed when I awoke you, all would be as it was before, but it would appear I was wrong. He will demand I fix this, I suppose, in order for the debt to be truly repaid,” she muttered, almost to herself. And perhaps she was, Steve couldn’t be certain her eyes were on him but felt penetrated by a foreign gaze enough to assume she was.

“I don’t understand,” he said while managing to bring his tremoring hand to wipe the tears from his face. It didn’t feel safe to speak to her with weakness dripping from his chin, all his wounds laid bare before her. He wanted to hide from her and see her all at once. He didn’t know if there was a word for such a feeling, but he desperately wanted the girl from before, Aurora to return, and try to find it for him the same way she tried to find words for her crossword puzzle. Steve needed someone more capable than him to face this new, strange and fantastic being in front of him. He had always been found wanting when someone really saw him.

“It is unimportant that you understand. Instead, you need only, _remember._”

His mind was on fire again, the weight of the woman’s words piercing through his head, only this time there was no field and no Tommy to burn. Only him.

He screamed as her command seemed to sear through the confines of his skull into the mush of his brain. His whole body demanded that the woman be obeyed, but he couldn’t remember her. He didn’t know her!

“Stop!” he begged as his tears flowed anew, his whole head threatening to collapse on itself. “Please! Stop!” he cried.

_“Remember,”_ she commanded anew, sending another bolt of lightning through every synapse of his brain.

In midst of the pain there were snippets, images without context flashing across the surface of his mind.

_Joyce Byers weeping._

_His bat broken in half._

_Black goo pulsating up from the ground._

_A thin, tall man with white hair standing in front of a massive shadow._

_All of the members of the Party, holding hands, cowering in a corner of a dark space._

_Eleven standing shoulder to shoulder with eight other people, all of their hands outstretched, her face contorted into a vicious snarl._

_Blood dripping from a gash in Nancy’s forehead._

_A thick fingered hand pressed against Steve's stomach, staunching blood flow from a grievous wound._

_Chapped lips in a blurred face coming nearer to his own._

_A balding man clutching his belly as something ripped out of it and splattered across the floor._

“Stop!” A new voice commanded, and Steve could only feel relief when the bald woman went flying into the wall beside him, his whole body alight with agony.

A sob broke free from his throat as he cradled his head in his hands, the darkness of his cupped palms a balm against the world that had done this to him.

A gentle hand ran through his hair and made him flinch violently before it retracted itself, a weight coming to rest on the side of his bed as someone sat next to him. “You hurt him,” a familiar voice accused beside him. “Why did you hurt him?”

The sound of clothing being adjusted and pat down reached his ears as the woman who was thrown into the wall must have righted herself. “You are always so dramatic, Asset Eleven. Hurting him was not my intention. Asset Twelve wants him to remember, so I used my abilities to try and make him remember, but he is…” she paused for a long time, enough time for his palms to fill up salty tears. “Damaged, somehow. Yes, his brain has been damaged. This has happened before when I attempted to use my abilities on someone with a head wound. They didn’t have the ability to obey and it wounded them further. I should have guessed from how difficult he was to wake up in the first place.”

“Damaged?” the body next to him whispered and the soft, uncertain tone of it clang with the bells of memory.

“Eleven?” Steve asked, voice hoarse from screaming, his brown eyes finding hers as he looked beside him.

Eleven smiled at him, a small, sorrowful thing, as she pressed her hand against his shoulder. “Hello, Steve. I am glad you are awake now.”

“Yes, and awake is unfortunately all I will be able to do. His mind will have to heal on its own. There are other places I must be. Tell Twelve, I have repaid my debt as best I could. If he wants more, he will have to come and work for us again.” The woman said, dusting off her clothes as if being thrown into a wall was nothing more than an inconvenience.

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” came an angry voice from the doorway. “In fact, pack your bags and get going _now._ He never should have called you in the first place and he won’t be calling again.”

And he knows that voice. Was wary of it once. Maybe even frightened of it but now it makes his heart thump with warmth.

“Hop?” He breathes.

Hopper looks over at him and Steve catches sight of a scar that runs from the hook of his left nostril down to his chin. The Sheriff is thinner than he remembers and his beard has gone mostly grey but the fire in his eyes tell him that he is still the man he used to be, larger than life and ready to kick ass and take names as needed. “Good to see you up, kid,” he says with an awkward wave of his big hand. “Now,” he says, pointing at the woman standing near the end of his bed, “get the fuck out of here so we can figure this out.”


	7. Chapter 7

The strange woman doesn’t seem put off by Hopper. In fact, if she had pupils, Steve would assume she is rolling her eyes as she steps around his bed and moves toward the door leading out of his room. “You should work on your gratitude, Jim Hopper. Do not forget that it was us that saved you.”

Hopper doesn’t back down. The former sheriff rises to his full height as he juts his chin at the door. “_Owens_ saved me,” he growled. “You didn’t do shit. Now _get out_ before I throw you out.”

Eleven’s hand on Steve’s shoulder is the only thing keeping him calm as he watches Hopper and the woman stare each other down. He feels powerless lying in his hospital bed with no bat to swing in desperation and his weakened body unable to run.

Most of all he just doesn’t want to lose Hop again. Steve needs to not be the oldest source of support in Hawkins. He can’t carry this all on his own. He can’t.

“Sister,” Eleven whispered cutting through the tension in the air as the woman and Hopper yield no further ground. The bald woman inclines her head toward Eleven’s voice but has her feet firmly planted in front of Hopper’s intimidating mass. “Thank you. You can take our brother and go home now. I promise we’ll be ok. I’m sorry I got angry. I was scared. Don’t want to lose anyone else.”

Though still stilted, Eleven’s words seem to hold a magic in them that is as remarkable as her other abilities. They act as a balm against Steve’s nerves and Hopper and the woman’s defensiveness. It’s as if all three of them breathe a sigh of relief in the aftermath of her short speech. Hopper takes a step back and the woman smiles, smug but resigned.

“You’re welcome,” she paused, “little sister. And you are welcome too, Mr. Harrington. I will see myself out.”

“You do that,” Hopper grumbled even as Eleven shot him a glare.

The woman just leaves on heeled feet, the tapping of her stilettos echoing on linoleum echoing in her wake.

And with one mystery having departed before he could get real answers, Steve focuses in on the miracle in front of him. “Hop, how-how are you here? How is this possible? Joyce said you died when you guys destroyed the Russians’ machine.”

Hopper blinks at him before looking to Eleven, whose furrowed brow and gentle frown must fail to provide answers for him, as the older man sighs and pulls at his greying beard. “Kid…Harrington…what, what year do you think it is?”

Steve felt his body go tense, even as Eleven tried to rub the tension away in his shoulders with her slender fingers. “1985, chief.” The father and daughter both wince. “Is it not 1985?” A new sense of panic begins to rise within him and the various machines he’s attached to beep in warning. “Hop, what year is it? What year is it? What’s happening? How long have I been asleep? That girl Ariel—no! Aurora! Aurora said I was in a coma! For how long, chief? How long have I been asleep?!”

Some machine to his left beeps rapidly in alarm as his heart begins to race again and Hopper rushes toward him in what feels more like an attempt to silence the machines than to comfort him, causing Steve to flinch away from even Eleven’s benign touch. “Answer me!” He shouted.

“Calm down, kid! Jesus!” Hopper snapped, only to receive another glare from Eleven. “You’ve only been down two and a half weeks. You got hit by a car. Broke your left leg and fractured two ribs. Doc says you had a brain injury because your brain swelled up in your skull. Coma was more of a protective thing or something—like you needed to sleep to heal. We’ve been worried about you.”

“Friends don’t lie,” Eleven said sharply. “Tell him the whole truth.”

“What?” Steve asked as sweat began to bead at his forehead in his building alarm. “What aren’t you telling me? Is there—is there something else wrong with me?”

Hopper sighed, running his thick fingers through his beard anew. “It’s not 1985, Steve. It’s 1990.”

Time seems to freeze as Steve tried to process this new information. “That-that doesn’t make sense. You said I was only asleep two and a half weeks. I mean it shouldn’t even be Christmas yet then.”

“Kid…” Hopper seemed at a loss for words. The older man’s mouth opened and closed but no words come out. After a moment, he just stared at Eleven, looking far more lost than a man Hopper’s age ever should.

“Do you remember the car?” Eleven asked gently, her hands now folded in her lap as she looked at him with her knowing brown eyes.

Steve thought for a moment—but the only thing that came to mind was tires screeching and the sensation of feeling weightless in the air. “Not really,” he said with a shrug.

“Do you remember Billy? Before the car?” Eleven asked.

“Of course I remember Billy,” Steve can’t help but snap. “We all remember Billy. He died! Just like Hop died so what the hell is going on?”

Eleven shook her head. “No. You saw Billy with his scars. You touched him and then you hurt him, but it was an accident. Don’t you remember?”

He opened his mouth to deny it, but the image of Billy, half naked and smiling came to his mind. His curls were longer, dragged past his shoulders. There had been a scar on his chest and his sides and his hands and Steve had held those scarred palms in his own and traced their alien pattern. Billy had looked at him with wide blue eyes filled with concern and Steve had been so afraid—so afraid that he hit him and left him with tears building in those ocean blue eyes. “That was real?” Steve asked.

“Yes. Billy came back just like Dad came back. They came back together. They came back a long time ago, Steve. Four, four, nineteen-eighty-six,” Eleven whispered. “That’s when Dad and Billy came home.”

“But I don’t remember that. I don’t remember anything like that. You’ve been gone! You and Joyce and the Byers moved away. Hop was gone. Billy was dead. We had a funeral!” He shouted.

“Kid,” Hopper jumps in. “What’s the last thing you remember outside from seeing Billy again? Just tell us whatever comes to mind. Doesn’t matter how small it may seem.” It’s the gentlest Hopper has ever been when speaking to him and somehow that frightens Steve even more.

Remember, the woman had said. He’s damaged, the woman had said.

How could he forget five years of his life? What was wrong with him?

He needed to remember. He had to remember.

_He’s drunk. Drunker than he has been in months. There’s someone laughing next to him, loud and obnoxious and filled with mirth._

_“Alright handsome,” the voice mocked. “Show me your moves.”_

_“A dare is a dare, but I just want you to remember not to feel embarrassed when I put your dance moves to shame, metal head!” Steve slurred before he spun around on his heel._

_“Uh-huh,” the person next to him laughed, their joy sending a wave of warmth through Steve’s whole body. “Stop stalling and start dancing. I wanna see how they do it in Indiana.” _

_“They do it **like this**!” He’s nearly screaming with laughter as he finishes his sentence and then he lunges at the person next to him and misses in what would have been an attempt to lift them up and twirl them into the air, colliding head first into a block of ice hidden beneath the snow as his feet go out from underneath him. For a moment his whole world goes white behind his eyes before he laughs at his own stupidity, numb from the cold and the liquor he has consumed, despite a trickle of blood that runs from his nose._

_The person above him is laughing too hard to even realize he has hit his head. There are tears falling into the snow and a howling cackle echoing into the air. “So that’s how they do it in Indiana, huh pretty boy? They eat shit? That’s your big dance move around here?”_

_There is a dopey smile on his face and he blinks up into Billy Hargrove’s smiling face, cheeks and nose pink with cold, even as dark spots threaten to obscure the vision of the Californian boy looking so happy and free. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, Hargrove. I’ll have you know that no one in the state of Indiana eats shit better than me.”_

_Billy’s eyes are sparkling in the dim light of the streetlamp. “I don’t got a single doubt about that, pretty boy,” the blonde laughed as he reached out for Steve with a scarred hand. “How bout you give me a lesson back at the house?”_

_Steve takes his hand and pretends to ponder the other man’s suggestion before he grips Billy’s wrist tightly and pulls the other man down onto his knees and into his chest. Billy’s curses sound like screams in the night air as he catches himself on Steve’s shoulders, his curly hair tickling beneath Steve’s nose and chin. “I don’t know, this seems just as good a place as any to learn,” Steve laughed as he wrapped his arms around Billy’s waist. _

_“I hate you,” Billy laughed. “You’re a fucking menace to society, Harrington.” But Steve knew he didn’t mean a single word. _

“I fell. I was with Billy and I fell and I…I hit my head and I didn’t…I didn’t tell him because I was-I was so happy and he was so happy and I didn’t want to ruin it. I wanted him to stay that happy.” Tears start running down his face. “I can’t remember anything else. I can’t remember anything other than that. I can’t remember.” He keeps repeating himself over and over again, each sentence becoming more illegible as sobs wracked his frame.

Eleven holds him in her arms, gently rocking him. “It’s ok, Steve,” she whispered. “It’s ok. We’re gonna fix it. I promise and friend’s don’t lie, ok?”

Hopper has a meaty hand on his shoulder, squeezing gentler than Steve would have assumed he could. “It’s gonna be ok, kid. We’re gonna figure out what’s wrong. We’re gonna get your memories back.”

But all he can think of is what if they can’t?


End file.
